Chevy Chase was in a coma for eight days in 2021 after suffering heart failure
A new documentary reveals that Chevy Chase was placed in a coma for about eight days after suffering heart failure during the pandemic. In 2021, it was reported that the now 82-year-old comedian spent five weeks in the hospital due to undisclosed heart problems.
“[He] has actually returned from the dead. He had heart failure,” Chase’s daughter, Caley Chase, said in the documentary “I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not,” which premiered Jan. 1 on CNN.
“Something was wrong, and he couldn’t explain to me what was wrong. So we go to the emergency room. His heart stops,” said Chase’s wife, Jayni Chase. “During the years he drank, he developed cardiomyopathy; when the heart muscle becomes weaker and they can’t pump as much blood with each heartbeat.”
Cardiomyopathy is a chronic disease that can lead to heart failure and other serious conditions.
“They decided to keep him in a coma for maybe eight days,” Chase’s longtime friend, Peter Aaron, revealed. “That’s pretty hard on the body.”
“The doctor warned us, ‘We may not get him back. We don’t know how present he will be. Prepare for the worst.’ He woke up and all he could do was use his voice,” Caley continued, imitating disoriented sounds.
She knew her father was the same old Chevy Chase when a nurse came in to rearrange some medical equipment: “She said, ‘I have to put this in here.’ And he said, ‘That’s what she said.’”
Aaron said it took a while for Chevy to “refocus” after the coma. He had a ‘cognitive disability’ and played cards and chess to ‘get his head together’. (“All I can say is how happy I am to be back with my family now,” Chase said in a statement to the press in 2021. “I’m feeling good. I was in the hospital for five weeks. A heart problem. So for now I’m at home. I’m not going anywhere.”)
In the documentary, Aaron said, “I feel like his memory deficits stem from that incident.”
Chevy agreed: “The doctors said my memory was going to be shot out. That’s what happened here.”
When confronted with uncomfortable moments from his past during the documentary, including conflicts on the set of “Saturday Night Live” and “Community,” Chevy said he could not remember many of the incidents.
“Heart failure is what it is. I’m doing well now,” he said. “It’s just that it affects your memory, that’s what the doctors told me. So I need to be reminded of things.”
Elsewhere in the documentary, the comedian discussed being “hurt” by his exclusion from the “SNL” 50th anniversary special.
“It was actually a bit disturbing,” he said. “This is probably the first time I’ve said it. But I expected to be on stage with all the other actors as well. Then Garrett [Morris] and Laraine [Newman] When I went on stage, I was curious why I didn’t do that. Nobody asked me that. Why was I left out?”
He added: “I brought it up once in a text to Lorne [Michaels] and then took it back. I said, ‘Okay, I’ll take it back, silly.’ But it’s not that crazy. Someone made a big mistake there. I don’t know who it was, but someone made a mistake. They should have had me on that stage. It hurt.”
